In August 2009 George Osborne said it would be “humiliating” if Britain’s AAA credit rating was downgraded and later that it was “absolutely essential we don’t have the downgrade that hangs over the country at the moment”. In the Commons in 2011, our part-time chancellor gloated that “our credit rating had been put on negative watch. Now, however, thanks to the policies of this coalition government, Britain has economic stability again.” Presumably the inference is that, after the Moody’s downgrading of the UK’s AAA rating on 22 February, we now have economic instability. Osborne suggested that maintaining the AAA rating was the number-one benchmark by which he should be judged, so we need to keep him to his word. It isn’t as if he wasn’t warned. And we seem to be heading for a sterling crisis, as there is growing pressure on the pound.
The only bit of apparently good news for the government came from the labour market. On 20 February, the Office for National Statistics reported that in the past quarter UK unemployment had fallen by 14,000 and employment had reached a “record” level of 29.7 million. Many took this as a vindication of the government’s economic strategy but it wasn’t. Youth unemployment was up by 11,000 and real wages fell once again. Also, the working-age population has risen, so the employment rate, calculated as a proportion of the working-age population, was below its old level spanning the entire period from 1997 through to the start of 2008.
Content from our partners
